You may have noticed from my posts and pages that I have a certain perspective on teaching – as does everyone who teaches. I am trying to be more consistent and organized in my pedagogy – the way I teach – and I decided to put up a little catalog of my pedagogical superheroes, along with a few of my comments. The list is from oldest to most recently read (although I am hopeful that I will re-read these books on a regular basis.) Please share your favorite books on teaching with me!
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire
revolutionized my brain. i would say it also affected my life (not just brain). good to read w/bell hooks.
Teaching to Transgress, by bell hooks
(The following is a blurb from goodreads.com)
In this book, bell hooks, one of America’s leading black intellectuals, shares her philosophy of the classroom, offering ideas about teaching that fundamentally rethink democratic participation. Hooks advocates the process of teaching students to think critically and raises many concerns central to the field of critical pedagogy, linking them to feminist thought. In the process, these essays face squarely the problems of teachers who do not want to teach, of students who do not want to learn, of racism and sexism in the classroom, and of the gift of freedom that is, for hooks, the teacher’s most important goal.
All About Love: New Visions, by bell hooks
(The following is a blurb from goodreads.com)
Readers of bell hooks’s fiery and eloquent attacks on racism and sexism might be surprised to see her take on the elusive subject of love, but in her own unique way, hooks beautifully weaves her childhood search for that emotion with society’s misuse (and dire need) of it. All About Love takes apart the sentimental and often fleeting aspects of romance, stuck in the muddled urges of sex, and details the problems that arise from the confusion between the two. What hooks does best is reveal that the true force of love lies in its spiritual, redemptive power, which can impact positively on humankind: “When angels speak of love they tell us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise,” she writes. “They tell us paradise is our home and love our true destiny.” –Eugene Holley Jr.
Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, by Lisa Delpit
(The following is a blurb from goodreads.com, with my edits)
By the year 2000, nearly 40 percent of the children in America’s classrooms will be African American, Hispanic, Asian American, or Native American, yet most of those children’s teachers will be white. In a radical and piercing analysis of what is going on in American classrooms today (in 1988), Lisa Delpit suggests that many of the academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication as schools and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics of inequality plaguing our system.
